Authors -- Fiction; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Martians -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
In the fulness of their hearts Daphne and Barty squeezed each
other's hand to express the joy and elation they felt at the
pleasantness of everything. She was his little sister once more,
from whom he had so long been parted, and they loved each other very
dearly.
"Que me voilà donc bien contente, mon petit Barty--et toi? la jolie
ville, hein?"
"C'est le ciel, tout bonnement--et tu vas m'apprendre l'allemand,
n'est-ce-pas, m'amour?"
"Oui, et nous lirons _Heine_ ensemble; tiens, à propos! regarde le
nom de la rue qui fait le coin! _Bolker Strasse!_ c'est là qu'il est
né, le pauvre Heine! Ôte ton chapeau!"
(Barty nearly always spoke French with Daphne, as he did with my
sister and me, and said "thee and thou.")
They found a furnished house that suited them in the Schadow
Strasse, opposite Geissler's, where for two hours every Thursday and
Sunday afternoon you might sit for sixpence in a pretty garden and
drink coffee, beer, or Maitrank, and listen to lovely music, and
dance in the evening under cover to strains of Strauss, Lanner, and
Gungl, and other heavenly waltz-makers! With all their faults, they
know how to make the best of their lives, these good Vaterlanders,
and how to dance, and especially how to make music--and also how to
fight! So we won't quarrel with them, after all!
Barty found for himself a cheap bedroom, high up in an immense house
tenanted by many painters--some of them English and some American.
He never forgot the delight with which he awoke next morning and
opened his window and saw the silver Rhine among the trees, and the
fir-clad hills of Grafenberg, and heard the gay painter fellows
singing as they dressed; and he called out to the good-humored slavy
in the garden below:
"Johanna, mein Frühstück, bitte!"
A phrase he had carefully rehearsed with Daphne the evening before.
And, to his delight and surprise, Johanna understood the mysterious
jargon quite easily, and brought him what he wanted with the most
good-humored grin he had ever seen on a female face.
Coffee and a roll and a pat of butter.
First of all, he went to see Dr. Hasenclever at Riffrath, which was
about half an hour by train, and then half an hour's walk--an
immensely prosperous village, which owed its prosperity to the
famous doctor, who attracted patients from all parts of the globe,
even from America. The train that took Barty thither was full of
them; for some chose to live in Düsseldorf.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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